The present invention refers to compositions containing essential oils that are as effective against inflammations, infections and diarrhoea as antibiotics and sulphamides, but differ essentially from the latter (and this is due to the herbal origin of these essential oils) in that they are fully assimilable or rejectable by the living organism, thus avoiding bioresidues and side effects.
These substances originating from herbal essences, in admixture with inert substances according to methods that are described below, constitute the essential ingredients of pharmaceutical compositions for medical and veterinary use, said compositions having properties of full and effective prevention of and treatment of various inflammations, infections and diarrhoea, while being safe for the environment and the organism (human or animal).
The substances that constitute the essential ingredient of said pharmaceutical compositions which are one of the objects of the present inventions are herbal essences with high contents in thymol, carvacrol and tannin.
These substances can all be obtained from herbs like Thymus vulgaris, thymus serpilum, saturea hortensis, saturea montana, saturea subricata, carum coptimum(India), thymus zygus (Spain), ocimum gratisum (Southern France and Africa), moranda puntata (North America), mosia japanoica maxinowisz (Japan), salvia officiaiatis and the like.
Herbs of the Labiatae family, which have been widely used as spices for flavouring dishes and beverages, are known to contain high amounts of thymol and carvacrol. The most common among them, thyme and oregano, differ from each other mainly in the content ratio of thymol and carvacrol. The essential oil obtained from thyme, which is known to possess antifungal and antimicrobial activity, has a higher content in thymol; on the contrary, herbs of the genus origanum contain predominantly carvacrol.
It was found that thymol alone as well as essential oils containing thymol in amounts corresponding to a carvacrol:thymol ratio of lower than 5:1, which show some antimicrobial activity on certain microorganisms, in particular Rhizobium legumirosarum, have the disadvantages that they have mediocre activities on strains of Staphylococcus aureus and an inferior activity on Bacillus subtilis.
Further, isolated thymol showed a good antimicrobial activity on Escherichia coli, while essential oils and their mixtures containing relatively low levels of carvacrol (having a carvacrol:thymol ratio lower than 5:1) resulted in a significantly reduced activity on the same microorganism, leading to the assumption that an antagonistic effect between the other ingredients of the essential oils may affect their activity on E. coli.
On the contrary, carvacrol alone, which had a significant antimicrobial activity on Staphylococcus aureus, had an inferior activity on Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis and Salmonella typi.
There is thus a continuing need of herbal based pharmaceutical compositions which overcome the above mentioned drawbacks.